FOR FREEDOM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 August 1941, Page 3

FOR FREEDOM

YOUNG PEOPLE RALLYING TO BRITAIN

ESCAPEES FROM CONTINENT.

MUCH ORGANISED RESISTANCE IN OWN COUNTRIES.

Day by day young people from the continent of Europe arrive in Great Britain having made their escape over difficult roads and dangerous waters. For the sake of the families they leave behind it is not possible to give dates and figures. All that can be said is that the numbers are swelling into a mighty army. The raid on the Lofoten Islands gave many such youthful patriots a first class passage in a British warship. Most of them must take a harder way. From France they come in home-made aeroplanes, from Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in little boats. Storms over the North Sea deter them a little, as do the aircraft and patrol boats of the enemy. HOME-FRONT MILITANT. Such adventures are the highlights of youth’s organised resistance. Thousands of young people who cannot leave their homes play a less spectacular, though hardly less dangerous part in the common struggle against Germany. Their weapons are sabotage and militant non-co-operation, and the success of their exploits can be measured by German anger: “Do you call crime courage?” exclaimed the vindictive German broadcaster when dealing with the case of six schoolboys who had committed sabotage. The Lofotposten of Norway (June 6) condemns them with equal vigour, but less precision: “It is a deplorable fact that the League of Admirers of England gets so many recruits from the) ranks of youth. Its mentality disre-j gards all reason and fact.” j But youth goes on its way, heedless of threats and warnings. When a favourite schoolmaster or professor is dismissed for refusing to preach submission to his pupils, they fete him as a hero: “Stolz, for thirty years principal of the Cathedral school of Bergen, whom the authorities dismissed for refusing to admit Hirdmen into his school, was given a moving farewell by his pupils, who declared they would never forget the injustice to which he had been subjected. The farewell celebrations developed into an anti-Nasjonal Samling manifestation.” (Dagensnyheter, Stockholm, May 27). When they are herded into labour camps and bidden to sing Nazi songs, no punishment on earth will make them open their lips. “At the labour camp at Troegstad, boys refused to sing German soldier songs such as ‘Wir Fahren Gegen Engelland.’ They received a five-hour penal march in hot sunshine, but they never sang.” (Goeteborgs Handels Och Sjofartstidning, Sweden, July 2). But they seize every opportunity of singing anti-Nazi songs, well knowing how this will stir uneasiness in their Nazi overseers. “Very strict measures will result,” so read the edict of Burgomaster of Gronigen in Holland, “if the recent disturbances, wherein young people took part in singing inadmissible songs, should be repeated.”

IMPERVIOUS TO PUNISHMENT. These young people care nothing for Nazi threats. “Until there are compulsory Youth Storm Troops there is no hope.” (Nazi broadcast in Dutch, July 7). They care nothing for imprisonment. Several young men have been sentenced to thirteen months’ imprisonment for damaging with sticks the targets and markers at a rifle range which the Germans were using. The sentences are mild because the offences are considered solely an expression of youthful exuberance.” Berlingske Tidende, May 17). Their parents are equally ready to sacrifice their liberty if it will further their nation’s cause. A Stockholm broadcast tells the story of a violent demonstration by young and old alike at Aalesund, Norway, on June 22. Townsmen discovered the sailing-date of a steamer that the Gestapo uses for shipping to concentration camps men whose sons have left for England. They resolved to stage a demonstration. The Nazi police, in spite of numberless arrests and brutal repressive actions, were unable to quell the demonstrators who attacked them with sticks and stones while a prominent citizen led captives and crowd alike in cheers for the Royal family and singing of the Royal hymn. YOUTH NONPLUSSES NAZI. The youth of the occupied territories has faced the Nazis in a spirit with which they are unfamiliar. They never met with it in Germany where a generation brought up under Prussian military traditions readily accepted rule-of-thumb behaviour and the freedom from responsibility which it enjoys in Nazi lorganisations. After eight years of handling docile young fanatics at home, the Nazis tend to take blind obedience in youth for granted. They have thus received a shock doubly severe on finding that in occupied territories no blandishments can still the conscience and no penalty break the spirit of youth brought up in the great tradition of democracy.